If you apply this consistently to every ingredient in every product you buy, you life must be a complete nightmare. For the sake of justice could we assume Clif are innocent until proven otherwise?I am all for bashing companies that are proven to use child labor and abuse animals. Just seems wrong to start nailing a company with good vegan products that has speculative claims made about them.

I've had the smores flavor builder bar finally, and it's yummy. I think it's child labor that makes them taste so good. By far the best one. Trying to get them stocked at my normal grocery store so I don't have to pay $2 each at the health food store.

Also, I hear "the food empowerment project" is a bunch of dirty, stinky hippies. Was on facebook, so it must be true.

[quote="Mikhail Koklyaev"]Benedikt he is deadlift god , I'm﻿ only amateur

Without trying to discount their claims, which could be true, they are very serious allegations and no factual proof has been provided.

I am naturally suspicious of any form of trial by media. We do not know who originally raised these allegations, the motives behind the allegations, or if there is any proof at all they are true. Just because the clif company has not categorically stated where they get their ingredients from, does not automatically imply they source their products from Côte d'Ivoire or Ghana. And even if they did source from these countries, this also does not automatically mean they sourced their products from farms that employ child slaves.

Are you serious? I don't think child labour, or accusations of it, is something to be chilled about, and it's nothing that should be used lightly.

It was the reaction I got which was essentially "Sit down and STFU" that I was saying to chill out about. Last I checked, I was free to speak my mind on these things, and given what I've read, I have a right to question.

I'm sorry that you find these bars so damned tasty that you refuse to question their potential ethics of their chocolate, but you know what...there are meat eaters who feel the same way about their food and will also tell us to sit down and STFU. And I don't see the responses as being all that different....

Are you serious? I don't think child labour, or accusations of it, is something to be chilled about, and it's nothing that should be used lightly.

It was the reaction I got which was essentially "Sit down and STFU" that I was saying to chill out about. Last I checked, I was free to speak my mind on these things, and given what I've read, I have a right to question.

I'm sorry that you find these bars so damned tasty that you refuse to question their potential ethics of their chocolate, but you know what...there are meat eaters who feel the same way about their food and will also tell us to sit down and STFU. And I don't see the responses as being all that different....

Questioning potential ethics is stupid. Everything is potentially unethical, so boycott everything and starve. And, you were not questioning anything, you were outright saying to boycott a company because they didn't reveal their suppliers to some bunch of hippies.

With the right to say whatever the fuck you want comes the right to be told to shut the fuck up. You are ignorant of the situation and calling for action, how did you expect people to react? You don't know who picked the cocoa beans or even where they were grown, but you are outraged because some people on facebook told you to be outraged. Who picked the cotton for your clothes? Who ground the pigments for the dye? How many people had to die for your shirt to be black instead of very dark blue? Probably none, but could be thousands. What you did was react out of ignorance and people called you on it.

It's unlikely they support child slavery. If it turns out they do, then boycott them and spread the news around the internet, but it still doesn't mean you reacted appropriately given the information available. It's the palm oil bullshit all over again.

[quote="Mikhail Koklyaev"]Benedikt he is deadlift god , I'm﻿ only amateur

The allegations made here are extremely serious and so I decided to give Clif the right to reply. They haven't taken me up on the offer of creating an account here so I'll just repost the response I got from them.

Hi *******

Thanks for taking the time to contact us.

We know there are concerns about child labor/slavery on cacao farms. We work directly with our suppliers to ensure a socially responsible supply chain and have never found any incident of slavery/child labor in our supply chain. We are going even further to ensure responsible sourcing into the future. And in the beginning of 2013, 100 percent of the cocoa ingredients in CLIF BARs will be sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. Farm workers at those farms benefit from safe working conditions, just wages and access to education for their children.